Connecting With People

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Jesus, thank you for this time. I pray that as we open up your Word that you would bless. Not because we're good, but because you are. Not because we're faithful, but because you are. Not because we're worthy, but because you are. Lord, speak to us. Give us life. Help us to live and breathe. Carry out your purposes. Love those around us. Help us to do that through your Word. That's your name that we pray. Amen. You guys can have a seat. All right, we began this series last week on the mission, but let's be honest, we were all fighting off a lot of sleep deprivation. Okay, it was January 1, I stayed up till 2, you know you stayed up at least until midnight. Maybe some of you were like, no, no, no, I'm in bed by 9.30 every night. Okay, fine. You're in bed by 9.30 every night, but that was not most of you. So I thought I would just take a second to catch everybody up so that we could remember

a little bit about last week. You might not remember much about January 1st, but I thought I would just help catch everybody up in case you weren't here last week. You know, this might be helpful. We talked about last week, we talked about clearing the table for what was absolutely essential. And more than just important things, so there's things that we could do that are But what we talked about was clearing that table for what was absolutely essential. And we talked about, we said it was a true encounter with the Lord. It was not just a passing glance. It wasn't just kind of a religious feeling. It was a true encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. And we talked about that. We said a true encounter happens whenever Jesus approaches us, challenges us, and then invites us. He didn't just challenge, He didn't just invite. He does both. challenges and invites us into more. And this, this mechanism of being challenged

and accepting that challenge and then and then accepting Jesus's invitation into a relationship with him, that is how we follow Jesus in the first place and it is how we continue to follow Jesus after that. In other words, those encounters with Jesus don't stop after the first time. Okay? You still, after you say, you know, after you get married, you see your spouse the next day. Okay? It's the beginning of something. It's not just kind of a one and done kind of deal. And this is why, so we're talking about our mission, we're talking about our mission statement. This is why the beginning of our mission statement starts with we want to encounter Jesus. We want to encounter Jesus. As a church, if we're not encountering Jesus, we're sunk. We have the best worship services in the world, but if we're not encountering Jesus, we're sunk. We have the best Bible studies.

We can even have half decent preaching every once in a while and we'd still be sunk, okay? We need to encounter Jesus. We need to see His face. We need to worship Him, right? We need to find life in Him. Without it, 1 Corinthians 13 says, Without love, we can have faith that moves mountains. I hear a lot of people talking about moving mountains. You, Danny, said something about moving mountains today. Yes, but there's something about it where, even if you have faith that moves mountains, but you don't have the expression counter with the Lord, it's just stale. It's just not there. It's worthless. Today, I wanna build on that. I wanna build on kind of the next step in our mission statement, but really the next step of kind of answering like, what do we do as a church? Where are we going? What is our mission? So I wanna talk about how encountering Jesus actually changes how we interact with people.

Okay, so great, we're having these encounters with Jesus. That's cool, that's great. How does that affect how we interact with people? And we're gonna start in Matthew five today. Matthew five, verse 13, we're gonna hit on some very famous verses today and famous verses in the middle of a very famous sermon, Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount. That's Matthew chapter five, chapter six, chapter seven. So we're gonna be in Matthew five. And then we're gonna jump past that to Matthew eight to kind of talk about some things there too. And so this is near the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. If you've heard of the Beatitudes, Jesus has just given the Beatitudes here. And in verse 13, Jesus starts talking a little different. He starts trying to help them understand something. So Jesus says in Matthew 5, 13, you are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste,

how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. Okay, so Jesus is starting to kind of shift the conversation a little bit, trying to help his believers, his disciples, His followers understand something about themselves. And he says, you are salt. You are salt, salt of the earth. Now salt preserves, that's what salt does. Salt gives flavor. And this is exactly what Jesus meant. So we talk about today, we talk about people being salt of the earth. Okay, so Bob and Freda, right? You guys are salt of the earth. Okay, you guys are salt, not salty, sometimes you're salty, but salt of the earth, right? It's a common phrase and it still holds the meaning that you are a preserving agent, right? Like that you keep things very real, not a lot of pretense with people that are salt of the earth,

right? And that's exactly what's happening. So when Jesus says, when you follow me, you're different, you're flavorful, you're interesting, you become something that is meant for other people, right? You become something, when you follow me, you are salt of the earth. Salt does not exist for itself. Salt flavors things, preserves things for other people. When you follow me, you become something

that is meant for other people. Jesus goes on, verse 14 and 15, it says, you are the light of the world, Jesus switches metaphors here. You're the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand. and it gives light to all in the house. So Jesus tells his followers that they are light, or lampstand, right, that they actually give light. Light illuminates, light warms, okay, gives off heat and light.

And so whenever he says, you are the light of the world, he is again reiterating the same basic kind of gist. You are meant for other people. You give light so that other people can see. And then you see it, verse 16. Jesus kind of summarizes here. He said, in the same way you let your light shine before others, so Jesus is kind of spelling it out. So that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. So the intended result of you being salt and you being light is helping others worship God. So Philippians 2 talks about this, about you being light and how you're not crooked, You're not twisted. It says, when you follow me, your life glows. Your life illuminates and it looks like God's kingdom. Your life is different. When you follow me, Jesus said, you are salt. You are light. And your life looks different. It glows. Other people can see God's kingdom because of you.

So, let's begin to kind of put this together. Jesus, in summarizing, Jesus is saying, You're going to connect with people. You will connect with people because you are different. Why are you different? Because you've had an encounter with the Lord, right? You've had an encounter, you've been encountering Jesus, you're different, you're being changed by that process. But then you will connect with people, okay? You will, if, in other words, Jesus says, if you follow me, you are light and you will shine. If you follow me, you are salt and you will flavor, you will preserve. So then, then in a great move, Jesus puts this whole thing into action. He talks about being soft, talks about being light, and then he puts it into action. Okay, so he's saying, okay, you're going to connect with people, and it's going to look like this. And then he spins right after the Sermon on the Mount.

The Sermon on the Mount ends in chapter 7. So follow me here. Jesus is preaching from Matthew 5, Matthew 6, Matthew 7. It's some really great verses in there, some really great teaching in the Sermon on on the Mount, but right after the Sermon on the Mount ends, this is very end of Matthew 7, in the beginning of Matthew 8. Matthew 8, 1 through 4, Jesus heals a leper. Matthew 8, 5 through 13, he heals the servant of a centurion. Matthew 8, 14 and 15, he heals Peter's mother-in-law, okay? And this all culminates in verses 16 and 17. When it says Matthew 8, 16 and 17, it says, that evening they brought to him to Jesus many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all over sick. And this was to fill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. So Jesus said, you are salt, you are light, you will connect with people because you

are different. And then he shows us an example of what that looks like in Matthew 8. But here, here, right here, right in this moment, right where we are together, Okay, people experience a common problem when we begin to ask the question, okay, well then how am I salt and light? How does that look like for me? How should I connect with people? Because then we gotta start making sense of this somehow in our day to day. And the way that we answer that is crucial to how we interact with other people, how we live on mission, it's crucial to those things. How we seek to connect with people really matters. I wanna look at three ways, and the first two ways I wanna look at are not good. Well, actually, that's not true. They're good, they just fall short, the first two ways. The third way is the one that we find when we keep reading scripture, so that's the obvious winner.

But the first two are good, but they kind of fall short. Okay. First way, let's look at this. How are we going to be salt and light? The first way is that people are very, you hear this a lot. First, be salt and light, full stop. Be salt and light, full stop. Okay. In other words, you need to serve people's real needs. You need to do what Jesus was doing in Matthew 8, where he's just, you You know, just healing people, you know, helping people meet and need, feeding people, whatever, man. You know, raising people from the dead, you're meeting people's real needs in the moment and you leave it there. This is option one. Overstated, overstated, this option sounds like this. Preach the gospel and use words if necessary. Okay? That's overstated. But the idea is, because look, it's still, look, it is a godly thing. It is a godly thing to simply serve people without expectation of church attendance and Bible study. Okay, it is

It is The Lord did that we can do that. That's a good thing to do. So don't hear me say we should never do it however It still falls short that ideology that that where it's just be saw be like just serve them where they are and then shut up You know don't say anything it falls short because Jesus actually spent like three chapters preaching before Matthew 8. Jesus did a lot of preaching himself as he was serving people's needs. He just finished the Sermon on the Mount, the most famous sermon. So it falls short because it's almost like we just want to take Matthew 8 out of context. If we just want to look at Matthew 8 and be like, look, all Jesus did was just serve people and then, okay, all right. We need more. Okay, this leads us to the second way, which is be salt and light by preaching. Be salt and light by preaching. In other words, the only way that you can serve people's real needs is if you preach

while you are serving them in some capacity. And when this is overdone, this becomes kind of a bait and switch. This becomes kind of... So maybe like you might serve somebody. You might give food to somebody. You might fix your neighbor's sink, but you do it as bait. You hear me? You do it as bait, because then you switch it up and you're like, okay, I'm going to fix my neighbor's sink, but I'm going to make sure I'm sharing the gospel with him as I'm fixing his sink. Okay, that's great. Again, it's not bad to preach the gospel. Don't hear me say that. It's not bad to fix your neighbor's sink, and it's not bad to preach the gospel while you're fixing your neighbor's sink. All those things are good. However, if you are always leveraging people with good deeds just so you can preach at them, that's a little short of what Jesus showed us. Does that make sense?

If, like, I respect the tenacity, right? Like, I love the fact that, like, you're excited about preaching the gospel. But what that does effectively over time, what that does is that turns Christianity into a crowbar, where all you're doing is you're just trying to, like leverage somebody in there and just be like, okay, you're going to come to church and be like, yes. You know, like it's just, it turns every conversation into like, like you're selling me on some multi-level marketing. Okay. It does. It turns everything into that. When, when in reality, in reality, what Jesus is doing is, is something a little different. So let's keep reading. And then let me, let me just offer kind of a different take on that. Okay. because I think I've messed everything up nice and good. Okay, let's keep reading. Verses 18 through 20 of Matthew chapter eight. Okay, so again, this is right after it says,

like you've put the words of Isaiah, here we go. It says, now when Jesus saw our crowd around him, he gave orders to go to the other side. Verse 19, and a scribe came to him and said, teacher, I will follow you wherever you go. And Jesus said to him, foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Okay, so you got a scribe. Scribes are pretty knowledgeable dudes. And he says, teacher, I will follow you wherever you go. Let me just ask, just how many times have you said that to Jesus? How many times have we sung that? That same sentiment, right? Hey, I'll follow you wherever you go. I'll do, yeah, I'll do anything you want me to do. And what does Jesus respond? Foxes have a hold and birds have nests, the Son of Man doesn't have any place to lay His head. So Jesus seems like He's being a little confrontational.

Okay? So let's keep going, because He doesn't stop. Verses 21 and 22, it says, another of the disciples said to Him, this is a guy already following Jesus, said to Him, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said to Him, follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead. Okay, so you have a disciple saying, look, let me go bury my father. Lord, let me put my family first right here. Let me go take care of what I need to take care of. And Jesus says, follow me, leave the dead to bury their own dead. So Jesus is inexplicably at this point, stiff-arming people that are just running to Him saying, no, no, no, I wanna follow you. And Jesus said, no, you don't, not really. The scribe and the disciple are being very clear with their intentions and Jesus stiff-arms them. What has changed? What has changed? Why does this look so different than how he's treating the sick and the afflicted?

Because you've got a verse before, the scribe and the disciple, and Jesus is welcoming all kinds of people and healing them and sending them on their way. So what has changed? Well, nothing really has changed. In fact, I would have made an argument that Jesus is still being salt and light. However, Jesus is connecting with people where they are. Jesus is connecting with people where they are. In other words, when it was the sick and afflicted who needed healing, Jesus connected with them as they came to him. They needed healing, Jesus healed them full stop. Period, point blank. Jesus never turned them away and said, well look, you don't, look, I know you're blind, but you don't really wanna follow me, so I'm not gonna heal you. That didn't happen. We didn't read any of that. There's never an instance like that in Scripture. I mean, there's times whenever Jesus says,

are you sure you wanna be healed? And they're like, yes, I totally do. Okay, and then Jesus heals them. Jesus connected with people as they came to him. They came to him just needing sight. So Jesus gave them what they asked for, simply. Without any kind of rigmarole, without any stiff arm, without any, are you sure you want it? Or nothing, nothing. It was just giving, giving sight to the blind. It was just healing the sick and the afflicted. However, when it's the scribe and the disciple who wanna follow him, but they have reservations, they're kinda holding things back in their heart. The scribe is preoccupied, apparently preoccupied with comfort. Because Jesus says, look, you don't have a place to lay your head, you still wanna follow me? I'm not so sure. And the disciple comes, he's preoccupied with his responsibilities, albeit noble responsibilities. He's preoccupied with them.

And Jesus is doing the same thing with them as He does with the sick and the afflicted. It's just that the scribe and the disciple are not being honest about where they are. The scribe and the disciple are coming in and going, look, I'm for you, Jesus, yeah, I'm for you. And Jesus says, no, you're not. It's different. And then in some ways, if you just allow me this latitude a little bit, in some ways, the sick and the afflicted are asking for much less, much less. They weren't asking for a true personal encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. They weren't asking for anything. They needed healing, and Jesus happily gave it. No strings attached, no stiff lining. What the scribe and the disciple are asking for is much more. And Jesus helps them see. Jesus loves that scribe and the disciple in the moment, helps them see you are less ready than you realize. You aren't quite where you think you are."

And he points directly at their barriers to following Him. This is really similar to the rich young ruler, right? Where the rich young ruler is like, look, I'm, you know, here I am, right? Like, fine fall with me. And Jesus is like, no, no, you're good. You're totally perfect according to the law. Sell everything and give it to the poor. And it's like, ugh. You know? And I imagine it was the same kind of dynamic with a scribe that's saying like, hey, I want to follow you." And Jesus says, okay, we're not sleeping anywhere but outside. And this guy's like, oh, that's not what I thought it was going to be. You know, look, if we're going to be salt and light like Jesus, if we're going to connect with people the way Jesus connected with people, we have to understand where they are. If we're always trying to connect with people the exact same way, then all we're going to try to do is fit people into a box

about where we think they should be spiritually, and then just have that approach on lockdown and just do the exact same thing every single time. And that's not what Jesus did and to stop what we should do. If we're going to be salt and light like Jesus, sometimes that means that you have to serve somebody without saying much at all. You serve them, you smile when they say thank you, they leave, and it's done because that's exactly where they are.

Sometimes being salt and light means you take a moment, you stop down, You explain the gospel. You share how you've encountered Jesus. You share your story because that's exactly where they are. And one is gonna require something different of you than the other, but it's where they are. And you see the Lord Jesus Christ, the guy that we're supposed to follow, you see him do that. You see him take people where they are. He doesn't stiff arm every disciple. And he doesn't heal every sick person. He takes people where they are. We just sometimes, very well meaning, we want this foolproof approach where we want steps, we want procedure, we want safety, we want it to happen a certain way, and we want it that way because we want other people to encounter Jesus. I don't know, anybody that follows Jesus and says, you know what, I'm all he needs. The gospel isn't for anybody else.

I've never met anybody like that, ever. Never have. We want other people to encounter Jesus, but we don't want to mess that up. We don't want to somehow kind of stir the pot too long and everything's overcooked, or not stir it long enough, or what, you know, like, here's the reality though. Here's the reality of connecting with people as salt and light. And it's a grim reality, but it's not that bad. Only those genuinely seeking Jesus actually encounter him.

Only people that are genuinely seeking Jesus actually encounter him. Now let me just say, it's not to say that Jesus is by appointment only. In other words, it's not like you're sitting in your room going, I think I'm ready to encounter Jesus. Okay, I'll pray, oh, Jesus, there you are. That's not exactly what I mean. What I mean though is that there's a way... I'll give you an example to the contrary, example to the negative. I was talking with an atheist, a Malthusian atheist, if you know what that is, very hardcore militant atheist. And Brian is his name. And he said to me, okay, Drew, if you're gonna tell me that Jesus is real, If God is real, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to hook up like a heart rate monitor, okay? And then I'm going to ask, I'm going to pray and ask God to make your heart rate like a certain level and keep it there. And he was dead serious.

And he's a metaphysics professor. He's not an idiot. This is not his first rodeo. He knows what he's talking about. And this is exactly what he was telling me. And he said, I'll get your heart rate up, you know, like, and then I'm going to pray for the Lord to make it real low. And then if Jesus does those two things, I'll believe. And I looked at him squarely and I said, no way would you believe after that happened. Because you have so many other things at your disposal and you offer other explanations for those things. Why would this be any different? I said, I could make, you know, like if the Lord just makes that chair, you know, levitate in thin air, spin around three times and go back on the ground, Exactly like you asked for it. You'd find, like you'd find strings, even though there weren't any there. You'd find a way to explain that differently, okay?

There's a way to come to Jesus that is not skeptical all the way. Does that make sense? When my friend Brian is talking about encountering Jesus and like somehow trying to set that up to look a certain way, it's disingenuous. It's not from the heart. It's not really him going, I really want to encounter, I really want to believe, I really want to see Jesus' faith, I really want to worship, I really do want to be changed." No, none of that was on his brain. When you have people that are genuinely seeking though, they approach all of that information differently. They approach it from a different perspective, from an open perspective. They're willing to have their minds changed, in other words. When you and I, when we come to Jesus with certain expectations, right? So this idea that we can only encounter Jesus if we're genuinely seeking Him, it is true when it comes to us too, right? If I come to Jesus and I have certain expectations

where I say, look, look, I'm going to follow you, but it's only if, you know, like family looks this way, career looks this way, comfort levels this, lifestyles this, all these things, You know, like if I would say to Jesus, I'll only follow you, I'll follow you, but you just keep me the pastor of this church. That's not how you follow Jesus. It's just not. It's me saying, I'll follow you no matter what. You take it all the way from me like Job and I will still follow you. Now that's a mouthful. And I'm not daring God to do anything right now, okay? But I am saying that must be our attitude. We have to trust him on that level. That if we don't, there's never gonna be some magical level we get to where we can trust God with more, or we can trust God with what we have, excuse me. There's never, you're never gonna get a certain amount of stuff into, oh, now I can trust God with all my stuff. Or be set, or, you know,

be sure to get your life kind of in a particular way that you want it. You're like, okay, now I'm ready to follow Jesus. That is a lie. That's a lie. We must come to Jesus' open arms. Like it talks about in the Sermon on the Matthew 6, the end of Matthew 6, it says that we need to seek Him first in His righteousness and all these things. All these other things are worried about what we're gonna eat, what we're gonna wear, what we're gonna drink, all those things are gonna be, they're gonna come in their own time. We got to seek Him first. So this is true when we follow Jesus. It's also true when we are being salt and light and we are connecting with other people. In other words, so it doesn't just work with me and Jesus, it works with being other people and Jesus, okay? Which is sometimes like that's the triangle that we get tripped up on, okay? Sometimes, you need to hear me say this and say it well.

Sometimes, people are simply going to come to you in crisis. They're going to get help from you and they're going to leave, okay? It's just going to happen. And a lot of times they're not even going to apologize. It's just going to happen. You, as someone who is loving people openly in an open-handed capacity, you, as you were. So Danny Ivy's testimony was great. Part of the reason her testimony was great was because she vulnerably opened up and just said, you want to pray? And she said, yeah. And then they prayed. And that was it. And it wasn't like Danny was like, that's going to be awesome. like three weeks, that's going to be good. Danny might have never seen the end of that. She might have never seen that woman again and heard the rest of that story, okay? But it doesn't mean that what Danny did was in vain. And it doesn't mean that whenever we do things for other people and they somehow don't even get

the fact that we're helping them, that we're sacrificing them, that we gave up an entire day or an entire afternoon or that we took off work, it doesn't register with them and we get mad. We want to be appreciated in that moment. Let me just tell you, as a disciple of Jesus, all we have to do is look at his life. This is the man that we follow, put everything on hold for people that just needed stuff from him. He gave it to them, no questions asked. When they just needed stuff from him. When you are salt and light with people, that means that you are going to be asked of things. You will not be repaid for those things. You will hardly be thanked for those things, and you will know that it's treasure in heaven, the end. That's it. That's all you got. Sometimes that is going to happen. Jesus never turned anyone away because they wouldn't follow him. When they were just seeking to be healed, you know, like some lame guy,

some blind guy, some mute guy, some deaf guy, whatever, demon possessed guy. Like, he wasn't saying like, hey, I'll only do this. He's not putting contingencies on it. He's not turning people away, and we shouldn't either. We should give generously to anybody. How scandalous is that? Even the guy that you know is going to spend it on booze. Even the guy, I'm not saying you've got to give money and think somebody asks you. I'm just saying that there's a skepticism that can set in. Well, you won't give anything to anybody because you aren't sure that they're going to do right by whatever gift you gave. That's not the attitude to have. Jesus gave away much more expensive things than, you know, 50 bucks. He gave away sight. There will be other times when you are salt and light, where people are genuinely seeking Jesus. And I'll just be very clear with you, those times will happen far fewer than

the first kind. When you are dealing with people, there's no solid ratio in the Bible or anything, but there's more people that are just needing something from you. And we'll just kind of just take it and leave than people who are genuinely seeking Jesus. But when you encounter upon a situation like that where people know they're genuinely seeking Jesus, they know they need something. They might not even be able to articulate it. They need a life-changing encounter with Jesus. They are hungry for truth. They are hungry for life. They're hungry for hope. And all those things are only found in Jesus. The ways that those things can satisfy are only found. Then tell them of the gospel. Tell them how you've been saved. Tell them. It didn't have to be perfect. Nobody's grading your theology. Just tell them. Tell them how... Look, here's my testimony. Are you ready? It's not long,

I promise. Jesus came to me and I was a liar. And Jesus said, I don't want you to be a liar anymore. I'm going to make you a truth teller. You follow me. I said, yeah. The end. That's it. That's my testimony. I don't imagine that yours is too much more complicated than that. That's it. They're hungry for those things. Just tell them of the gospel. Share your story. Listen to their story, right? Just start a relationship with them. Just invite them over for dinner or go coffee with them or something. I mean, just find a way to keep that conversation going because they need to hear the truth. They want to hear the truth from you. They're at least moderately interested. Share your story, tell them of the gospel. Jesus, and here's really important, Jesus is going to take care of the challenging and the inviting.

You don't have to leave the conversation and somebody's like, oh, I just felt like I was talking to Jesus right then. Like that's not, okay, like we're not trying to do that. All we're trying to do is love people in the moment, tell them of the gospel, share with them what Jesus has done in us for us. And Jesus is going to use that. He's going to use your story. He's going to use the word. He's going to use preaching, all of that to challenge people and to invite them into a relationship with Him. And yeah, there's times where you say, hey, do you want to follow Jesus? Like, I mean, if it's totally right there, go ahead and ask. It's great. I'm not saying don't. But I'm saying when you connect with people, you have to know not everybody. In fact, most people aren't like, man, they're just wondering how they can give their life to Jesus. That's not most people.

It just isn't. We talk about people exploring the gospel. Most people are not exploring the gospel. They're just not. Most people are just worried about how they're going to pay for dinner in two weeks. Most people are just worried about what's right in front of them. It is a grace of God whenever somebody begins to start worrying about, okay, what's my legacy? Why am I crying at a sunrise? What's happening? Why am I different? Jesus says, we are salt and light. I just wanna recap as kind of as we close, I want you to think about a few things. Jesus made us in such a way that when we encounter him, we're changed into something else. We're changed into salt and light. That's something else that we're changed to is for the benefit of other people, period. So then we should, we have this inherent responsibility.

There's an onus to care about where people are going and they die to care about how people live, to care about spiritual realities. When most people do not, we've been given that responsibility. We've inherited that. And so our job as we connect with people is not to just put them in an assembly line. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach. Our job as we connect with people is to take them as they come.

Take them as they come and trust that Jesus is using their circumstances, our story, our conversation, any explanation of the gospel that you give, any praying that you do with them. Just going to use all that to challenge them and to invite them into a relationship with him, just like he did with you. Same way, same way. What I want to do, just as we close in prayer, I want you to think about, Just think about people that you have been connecting with lately. I want you to think about people that are in, maybe in some kind of circle, people, co-workers maybe, or even family members.

Clay, whenever he was given an announcement about All Roads Lead, that's gonna be a class that's gonna be really helpful for people that are just on a different world new, man. They're just not, they just don't understand, but they wanna learn, and they wanna learn without screaming or shaming. And we're offering that to the community, right? A way to learn, a way to understand those things. I'm really excited about that class coming up, but there's many people that are around you that would either benefit from going to a class like that or would just benefit from having a conversation with you that didn't end up like foaming at the mouth of politics. Okay? Where you're just loving them where they are, where you're just taking them as they come. I want you to think about one person, As we sing, we're gonna sing a couple songs. As we sing, I just want you to pray about that person.

I want you to pray for them. I want you to be salt and light right now. I want you to pray for them. I want you to think about who that person is. Today, just during our response time, we're gonna try something a little different. We are gonna move our response time to the end of the service, okay? So after we're done singing, after the music's up, after everything, We've got a couple of chairs over here. There's nothing wholly about those chairs. They're just over there. You want to talk, you want to pray, you want to whatever. We could sit down right over there. Yeah, there's going to be hustle and bustle out here. That's fine. Don't get too self-conscious over it. We can just be over there just talking. I'll just be over there just casually. It doesn't have to be weird. You don't have to approach a certain way. It's fine. Just walk up. Okay, you want prayer for something?

Then we'll pray. You want to help with something? Let's get it going. You want to be baptized? You want to join the church? You got questions? Let's handle it just right over there. As we enter into our time of response, let's pray, and then we'll sing. Jesus, thank you for this morning. I pray that you would help us as you bring people to our mind that you would help us to be salt and light to them in a way where they are, not in a way that we wish they were, but as they are where they are. Give us the courage to love them in that moment and to see them as you see them. That's your name that we pray. Amen.